I saw something interesting on Medium today - Trigger Warning · 6:58pm Sep 10th, 2016
And since Bad Horse is out for a few days, I thought it only fair to toss the proverbial match into the proverbial witch-burning pyre. Here's the link from Yassmin Abdel-Magied about why she walked out of the Brisbane Writers Festival keynote address given by Lionel Shriver.
Key phrase in the speech : "Her question was — or could have been — an interesting question: What are fiction writers “allowed” to write, given they will never truly know another person’s experience?"
My immediate thought: Every single ponyfic writer (well, nearly every one of us, discounting full HIE writers) treads straight over that line with every story we write. I am not a lesbian apple-farming pony in love with a lesbian dress-designing clotheshorse, but if I want to write a Rarijack fic, nobody will blink an eye (well, other than my readers, since I haven't written one of those yet).
Interesting how the mental shift in an author's POV caused by writing fanfiction about a cartoon can reflect back on real-world controversy. If I want to write a best-selling novel from the POV of a Nigerian Muslim woman even though I'm... not, so what? Am I to be restricted to writing only about male computer geeks because of some buzzword-tossing tossers in organizations I don't care about? Heck, no. I flaunt my cutie mark in their general direction and flick my tail in derision (despite not really having either of those, or even a fursuit, and no I don't want one but thanks for the offer anyway). I shall write what I want in the way that I want, and all those nitwits who cry "Cultural appropriation" or "White privilege" shall be given all of the attention they deserve. ( cat hatemail.txt > /dev/null ) (edit: corrected)
Discuss (but no long profanity-laced tirades or I'll delete those faster than Spike in a bowl full of gems)
(For those of you who are enraged into spittle-flecked fits of fury by my words, you may register your displeasure by firmly depressing the 'Alt' key on your keyboard (press harder for best effect) and while holding it down, tap the 'F4' function key repeatedly. Each keypress sends a thousand volt shock through my keyboard (Honest!) and shows me yor prper fedbk ad keps m frm typig rignt.)
Nothing you can do will ever make you not wrong and evil and horrible to people like that, so there's no point caring about what they'd think about any specific thing you do.
Next time we have the Hugo Awards, we should nominate Fallout Equestria.
Alright, I'll get the long, profanity-laced tirade out of the way.
See, the thing is bad word and swear, which makes me so curse word mad I could vituperation. With a impreciation. And any profanity who disagrees is a total oath of blasphemy who should buy my apples on a megaphone, twice.
Okay.
Unless we're writing an autobiography, how can we not extrapolate, research, and make shit up? (and granted, some of that goes into autobiographies, too)
I don't know about other writers on the site, but I put in things I know, research things I don't, and if it's something where I really care if I get it right, I interview people to see what their take on it is, or I have someone who's qualified read through it.
If I wanted to write a story from the POV of (to use your example) a Nigerian Muslim woman, you can be damn sure I'd be interviewing as many Nigerian Muslem women as I could find, and I'd have them read over what I wrote when I was done to make sure it was accurate.
4203282
Agreed. Do however much research you can to make sure your muse isn't talking out her rear end, then follow her to the ends of the Earth and beyond.
My thinking is that if an author wants to write a character that belongs to a group other than the author's own, that's fine. But said author shouldn't pretend to speak for the people themselves, or their experiences, as doing so would be a little presumptuous.
For example (assuming an author is straight):
You want to write a gay character? Awesome-sauce.
Wanna write about the "gay experience"? Maybe it'd be best to leave that to people who would know better than you.
I did a search for what Alt F4 would do. Please Georg edit it. I was tempted to try it out of curiosity, having no clue as to what it might do.
I read her blog, and the funny thing that popped into my head was the recent outrage over the old Confederate flag. For years it has been here or there in popular media, like on the General Lee in the Duke's of Hazard, and no one ever really made an issue of it. Now suddenly it is a horrible insult to African American's and a glorification of one of the darkest periods in American history. Almost daily for a time we heard about it being removed from this place or that place, and talk about making it illegal to display.
The thing is, that for many Southerners that flag has nothing to do with slavery, and was all about their pride as a southerner. The people who were outraged by the flag were ascribing thoughts and motivations to the people flying the flag that in the majority of the cases simply did not exist.
But, somehow I don't think the author would find issue with those people appropriating the Southerners outlook with one of their own.
I read the piece on the Guardian earlier. Now, in general, I'm not of the mind that cultural appropriation is a terrible thing, but the obvious rejoinder here is that lesbian magical horses are not an oppressed group 'cause they don't actually exist.
4203316
For the record, my ambivalent stance on cultural appropriation is that:
(i) I like my choice to pilfer whatever real-world misery I like to make my stories.
(ii) I'm aware that doing so might end up hurting some people, and so maybe sometimes it's better to just leave it. Out of basic human decency, y'know?
(iii) This is a topic that tends to make people on both sides into dickheads.
Here's the author's critical mistake: they think they can ever know any PoV that isn't their own individual PoV, and that their point of view is universal.
What I mean is essentially Abdel-Magied is saying that if you're straight, you cannot write the point of view of someone who is queer. Yet a queer individual can't write the point of view of a queer individual either[/]. The only point of view they actually have access to is their own, and that point of view is by no means universal, even if they have similar experiences.
I think a lot of non-authors, like Abdel-Magied are deeply confused by the tao of authors or creative people in general. For them, everyone has the same PoV as themselves, and because they're incapable of putting themselves into other people who aren't themselves' shoes, as author by definition must, they end up getting upset when authors do so.
What trigger are you warning people about? Just saying "trigger warning" is like saying "allergy warning". "This product contains things."
And I'm pretty far liberal, but I have real mixed feelings about cultural appropriation. I think it's a legitimate concern to say that we're not hearing from underrepresented voices — we don't live in an equal world — and the ultimate solution of getting those minorities' voices heard is one I support. However, forbidding authors from drawing on external (minority) experiences isn't a workable solution, because the consequence of that is "erasure": majority voices deliberately avoiding minorities and treating them as invisible.
The only middle ground I can see is to be willing to reach outside of your experiences, and as much as possible, to treat those other voices you encounter with respect. It's hard and risky and a continuous work in progress, and you're guaranteed at some point to screw up (just like playing around with perspective and tone and theme and other advanced writer tools will wreck stories at times), and you have to learn from it and do better as you go.
Also, what others have said upthread about listening to voices in the community you're representing before you try to represent those voices. We live in a remarkably interconnected world these days; there's no shortage of opportunities to research straight from primary sources.
Graaaaah, "cultural appropriation" again. Perhaps Ms Abdel-Magied is unaware that she is speaking and writing in English, a language made from "cultural appropriation." Look in a freaking dictionary, and note the etymology of every freaking word. English stole them from everyone. I recall reading, somewhere, something along the lines of "English is the product of Norman soldiers trying to seduce Anglo-Saxon tavern wenches, and is just as bastardized as every other result of that activity."
Heck, let's turn that around. You're an "Aussie Muslim woman", and (*checks the euphamism of the day*) Person of Color. OK, fine. You don't get to write about anyone with a penis, a different skin tone, membership in a different religion, or a place of residence in the Northern Hemisphere. Oh, wait. You gave yourself a "get out of hypocrisy free" card:
Riiight. They're oppressed, so it totally doesn't count when they do it. But those evil oppressors can go die in a fire.
Perhaps you should stop with the pity-party and write better stories than the Evil Old White Men. Then you'll get published, and they won't. If there's anything modern-day publishers want more than writers who can make them money, it's minority writers who can make them more money and give them good PR.
This identity-politics Oppression Olympics horseapples isn't going to have the outcome you want. Keep shouting about how the White Master Race is keeping everyone else down, and that the Evil Patriarchs are overpowering weak, helpless women everywhere, and eventually, people will start to believe you. Do you want White-Supremacist He-Man Woman-Haters? Because this is how you get White-Supremacist He-Man Woman-Haters. I'll avoid listing the current suspects myself and simply wave in the general direction of the people screeching about Trump, Brexit, and so on. They can fill you in. Be sure to ask about Pepe and Kek.
Um. cat hatemail.txt | /dev/null won’t work, /dev/null isn’t executable, you need a >, not a pipe.
(takes the tech nerd hat off and puts on a social scientist hat)
All culture is appropriation by one generation of what the previous generation has produced, usually in the hopes of making the next generation more like them. I.e. the ones who survived through being tutored by the generation before that.
All culture exists because it offers a survival benefit. Even things that don’t look like they do. There’s a certain amount of inertia, but really, that’s all it is actually for: an accumulation of social practices that continue because they work, and work because they continue.
Therefore, denying the privilege of appropriating something across cultural borders is essentially a statement of desire that you, the one who isn’t allowed to “appropriate,” shouldn’t survive.
I suggest you treat it as such.
I can't help but find Abdel-Magied's account sounding very... biased. As though she's trying to ensure that we believe Shriver's speech to be as vile and unreasonable as she found it. It's hard to tell, since I don't have a reliable record of that. That said, I agree with Georg and 4203301 that you should be allowed to write things outside your own immediate frame of reference - as long as you're not trying to make some highfalutin claim of speaking for a group who'd rather speak for themselves, as it were.
But fiction is fiction. It's made up. It's right there in the name: fiction, something that is fictive and fictitious. Just by trying to write fiction, we're required to incorporate elements that haven't necessarily happened as depicted.
Actually, an anecdote comes to me, if you don't mind. (If you do mind, just skip to the next comment.) Years ago, I attended the Swedish equivalent of high school (it involves more axe throwing and bear wrestling than American high school, but is otherwise very similar) and was given an assignment to write a short story. No requirements, just a piece of fiction. I wrote a rather silly piece about a princess captured by a dragon and her three prince brothers who had to save her (one who was brave but dumb as a rock, one who was clever but an enormous coward, and one who never said anything). It was pretty much a comedy, playing with the typical tropes of the genre but largely not trying to accomplish much more than to entertain. It had a few typos and badly written sentences, but received an MVG grade, roughly equal to an A.
Then a classmate of mine caught sight of it, and got upset. His story had only received a G - passing - grade, and he wanted to know why my story was considered "better". He browsed through it, then looked at me and said in all seriousness:
"You shouldn't have gotten this grade. Your story isn't real."
Naturally I was baffled by this remark, because no such requirement had been mentioned. (And also, he wasn't the teacher. They didn't even look alike, unless you squinted a lot.) So I asked to see his story, just to get an idea of his perspective. It was a rather maudlin piece about a gypsy girl who had been raped by a soldier, and in the end committed suicide out of shame. It was properly written, but kind of bland, and despite the potential of the premise, it didn't actually say much. She was traumatized, he was a non-entity, and then she died, the end. I naturally assumed that my story was better on grounds of actually being entertaining if not thought-provoking, but that's opinion. I just didn't get why he thought his story was more "real" than mine, since he confirmed that the events had not actually happened. In the end, I guess that he just believed that a story with a serious subject should automatically trump a simple fluff story. Because a story can't just be a story, apparently.
4203278 sounds good.
4203305 good thing you googled it.
And no, he should leave it, it's perfect
4203346 OPRESSION OLYMPICS
What are the events?
4203345 He's talkin about himself, he's warning us that he's been triggered.
The thing about "cultural appropriation" is that it is at the same time totally a thing, and nothing like what those that throw around the term describe it to be. Let me see if I can unpack that in terms of the bullshit crossover story I'm in the process of completely failing to write properly, mostly as a writing exercise at this point I have to admit.
My story is about a zebra - because the protagonist in my source material was a physician, and figured hey, fanon loves its medical-genius zebras, so why the hey not? - who becomes the chronicler or Annalist of his mercenary brotherhood due to the machinations of fate and coincidence. So he is a zebra (canonically sort-of African expy), written as a child of some clan of long-urbanized zebra (in context, somewhat reminiscent of American black post-war Northeast diaspora experience) which in retrospect I've probably subconsciously modeled in part on the character Dr. James Nichols from the shared-universe Ring of Fire books, but not deliberately at the time. So much for the kind of "cultural appropriation" aspect of the character as they mean it - all that signifies is the casual racism and comedy in a military context of various not-zebra in the outfit clashing with my protagonist, the fact that they make witch-doctor jokes at his expense, and he responds in kind. Although he most strongly reacts to the insult "mudpony", despite it not being aimed at him, because the secret of my zebra Sawbones isn't that he's black and grey striped, but that he believes at a core unconscious level that he is a pony, even if his peers don't.
Because Sawbones has been appropriated by a culture, and that is what the term should mean. Cultures are voracious, and they provide membership, and meaning, and those that are healthy and aggressive, vigorously and aggressively claim the emotional allegiances of alienated and culturally vulnerable individuals. Sawbones' allegiance is to an explicitly pony sub-culture, one that saved him from medical indenture to an abusive master who never would have let him out of an aggressively interpreted apprenticeship. it is a sub-culture with a strong and deep written tradition, rites of passage, shibboleths of membership and a strong distinction between the in-group and the out-group. It is also a demon-worshiping Nightmare Moon cult, but a quirk of fate and institutional amnesia has divorced its origin from those elements which make it continuously attractive and healthy as such organizations go.
And his pony Nightmare-Moon cult, which was originally in the depths of time composed almost entirely of hagridden bat-pony tartarus-spawn, is dozens of generations from that batwinged origin, and composed entirely of those drawn to its standard, those that have been appropriated to the forgotten purposes of an amnesiac cult, which is really all any cultural institution is, at its heart. A cultural organization is not, contra Emerson, the lengthened shadow of a man, but the shell of people an idea pulls behind it like the hermit-crab and its stolen shell. Which is why I've been trying to write my zebra surgeon-not-a-shaman as a pony universalist, at odds with his own brethren on the idea that everypony is a pony, their caribou enemy, their donkey employers and new recruits, the freedpony oxen he buys and sets free to become his ambulance-drivers, even the griffin Captain of his own Company. Because he is himself hag-ridden by an idea, one almost orthogonal to the original purposes of his cult of a Company, but then - the shells the hermit-crab drag around behind them are never their own, but rather are appropriated, empty and dead, by an opportunistic naked anthropod in need of a fortress against the hard rain that falls on every seafloor bed.
I guess what I'm saying is that ideas appropriate us as much as we appropriate them. In its healthy form, it is a symbiosis, a meeting of hermit-crab and emptied shell, and who can say what is the shell and who is the crab?
4203345
The linked text contains some minor mention of rape. That's all I can think of.
As for this bullshit (sorry, I'm not going to dignify it with the word "speech"), it is full of so much pretension and idiocy it almost made me ill. Call people out if they show a distinct lack of respect for a culture they're illustrating with, that's fine. People do that in the film industry all the damn time. But this self-victimization on behalf of multiple cultures that she doubtless has little or no connection to, when there is no intended disrespect, feels even more disrespectful than this "cultural appropriation." It reeks of a social justice warrior trying to find hate where there is none, just because they get off on being offended.
This paragraph in particular, I think, really did make me queasy for a moment because this person actually exists and is listened to:
Comparing Shriver saying that authors should be allowed to write the fiction they choose, regardless of their own race, culture, circumstance, etc, to the inhuman treatment of Indigenous Australians? Are you fucking serious? Is this just a corollary of Godwin's Law or is this woman just that stupid?
I guess that's it everybody. Just go home. Fiction is dead unless you only write about your own culture. Although, even then... wait a moment! I'm a quarter Mexican! I've lived in the U.S. my entire life and only have a remote second hand clue what it's like to live in Central Mexico, but since it's technically part of my culture, that means I can write a respectful and legitimate fictional account of someone living in Ciudad de México perfectly, right? Except not.
I only tackled it in two ways, but I'm confident in saying that this woman's argument is socially and logically unsound. I could be biased though, given the aforementioned paragraph I just think she's a stupid bitch, more insensitive than the person she's lambasting. So... I could be looking at things a bit skewed.
While I understand the author's point, I am inclined to disagree with her, at least partially.
Cultural appropriation is pretty awful, but not everything written out of the realm of your own experience counts as such. As writers, I think we're obligated to try to be authentic and respect the culture and experiences of others, and I don't believe it's impossible to do. Of course, a person shouldn't expect to be above criticism when they fail to do so.
Still, that's not something to take lightly. History has had plenty of examples of people just taking a stereotype at face value and creating works based on those, and it requires time and effort to avoid doing the same thing. For instance, a few years ago, when I wrote a story centered around a 10-year-old girl, I did my best to read works by and about that age group to try and get that perspective. Later, actual women wrote about how much they liked her and related to her as a character, and that's how I knew I had succeeded, despite never being a 10-year-old girl before. It just took the extra effort to get into such a mindset.
Still, it's not an all-or-nothing thing: you're allowed to write about anything you want, but you shouldn't be allowed to do so without careful consideration and thought. And that's always an ongoing discussion. Remember a while back when there was this video of this black woman harassing a white man because he had his hairstyle in dreadlocks? I think most thought she was being hypersensitive. But I'm still on the side of people who think it's offensive that we use native people as our sports mascots and name our teams after racial epithets. But in between those extremes are a lot of gray-ish areas.
Point is, it's not simple. At least it's easy with ponies, though, for at least one simple reason: the ponies on MLP aren't real, so they're never going to get offended.
4203481 I appreciate your nuanced and thoughtful perspective, and I hope you keep doing what you're doing when you are drowning in the rage tears of a thousand trolls in about twenty minutes.
Ahem, I believe my thoughts on the matter are "That's bucked in the head".
I am an asexual white guy, who the heck am I allowed to write about? Do I have straight characters in my stories? Yes. Do I have gay characters in my stories? Yes. Do I have trans characters in my stories? Yes. I have even—and I know this will be hard for you to believe—had a story with an ace (slang: asexual) in it. I guess I am a terrible person and should just never write again.
So then, by this young entitled woman's own argument, we should never have any fantasy stories, any science-fiction, nor indeed any historical fiction. For that matter, you can't write anything unless every character is a clone of YOU. How about that...
BRB, writing story about myself falling into the mirror pool, since that is the only bucking thing I am allowed to write now.
I am a little saddened to be an Australian, particularly since this is a country that tries to pride itself of being accepting and open.
Buck, horse-apples, damn, blast, drat, belgium... do I need more to count as profanity strewn?
4203490 Heh. I doubt that'll happen. But even if it does, so much the better...
Rage and tears only make me stronger.
Hear hear, and well said! One is rather forced to wonder where these people think their own culture came from, given that the entire history of human cultural development at least since and probably before Mitochondrial Eve is everyone appropriating just as hard as they could from everyone else. (Apply this appropriation-is-bad theory in any sort of consistent way, and all of a sudden civilization comes to an abrupt stop because Og the Caveman totally appropriated the idea of pointy sticks from his forest-dwelling neighbors, belike.)
It's also so delightfully asymmetric in its application. Has anyone ever called out the Japanese on the Meiji Restoration, one of the best organized mass cultural appropriations in history? Methinks not.
(Of course, I chose to write my own SF in a universe entirely devoid of humans specifically to avoid, or at least be able to dismiss, the inevitable whinging and outrage I'd seen directed at other authors, so I may be somewhat biased.)
4203510 Are mirror pools part of your culture, or have you had a personal, meaningful experience involving a mirror pool? If not, you have no right to write about it. You horrible appropriator, you.
4203345
This comment is insensitive to those of us who are allergic to things.
:)
(I only half-kid. Supposedly it's only pollen I'm allergic to, but some days I feel I'd probably still be sneezing on the moon.)
But, no, seriously though, I've a slightly different take on the whole subject matter due to one crucial fact: I am in an underrepresented minority. Albeit not one of the cool ones[1]. Point is, if anyone wrote a book with a $GHOSTPEOPLE protagonist and was not from this very small part of the world... they'd fail. I mean, maybe not, but only if they spent a lifetime in study. Otherwise they'd _constantly_ run into issues: "No, you never eat those two things together. You just don't. No, that's the _Easter_ greeting not the Christmas one. No, that's not the right word. Okay, it's the right word, but it is the wrong gender. Okay, you got the gender right, but the case is... oh, that reminds me you got the adjective specificity wrong. Yeah, well, we don't have articles. Also, you'd never say that to your father's brother's wife's sister. Well that's an important relationship. It is here. Oh, and that reminds me, on page 331, nobody would ever say that in a restaurant. No. Very bad form."
Just like if I took to writing someone from Kansas I'd get something wrong, even though I have put in a lifetime's study.
If we want writing to exist, we have to be cool with these things. As long as the writer has made minimal effort and it is clear that he sees $GHOSTPEOPLE as people and not props, I am happy about things. (And shocked we are mentioned at all, but that's a different kettle of fish.) I do not think that an entirely unreasonable standard to be made universal.
Because as matters stand, I am, as an uncool minority, _abundantly_ dis-incentivized to write a character unlike myself. Because I will make mistakes, and those are considered utterly unforgivable in this climate. Best write of elves and gnomes and striped-wing semiotic moths where you are safe.
[1] For some reasons, Slavs are still on the 'okay to hate' list. Does anyone want to talk to whoever's responsible for updating those things and ask them to get a move on?
4203481
Apart from the cold hard fact that if you harass someone about hair you are automatically in the wrong, dreadlocks were used by half a dozen ancient peoples some of whom were white, some of whom were black, and most of whom were, really, neither.
4203426
I made my Zebras lightly African (because that's what the show wants) but I was sneaky and made the place a mixture of 6th century Aksum and 13th/14th century Mali with a layer of my own invention on top. So, to get offended, people generally need a history degree.
4203373
Since we are nerding: Why not cat hatemail.txt > /dev/lp0 and then with a modest investment in electronic parts you can have hatemail-triggered Blinkenlights, thus transforming ugliness into beauty!
But, seriously, though, I see your point. I mean I'm European and in Europe we've been busily appropriating each other's culture (whenever we weren't at war with one another) since the year dot. If you told us all to stop now I don't know how we'd disentangle what belongs to whom and who's the evil oppressor[2].
[2] The Germans. It's always the Germans[3].
[3] Sorry Antsan.
4203585 Oh bother, well, back to me writing about myself writing about myself then...
4203600
I think that's how you get the infamous "lp0 is on fire" error message. :)
4203436
Thank you for your answer, but mostly I was trying to provide feedback to Georg. The reason I asked my question is that, like allergy warnings, the point of a trigger warning is to provide warning of a potential trigger. If someone has gone through a traumatic experience and might have a damaging reaction to the material in the linked article , it gives them a chance to skip reading it (if they would rather opt out of the discussion than risk trauma), or at least mentally prepare themselves to face the thing so it doesn't blindside them out of nowhere. Leaving the trigger unspecified makes it useless.
(It's possible that Georg is simply mocking the idea of trigger warnings in the first place, but if that's the case, he should at least engage with it as something he understands and rejects rather than just hating on a buzzword. I wouldn't be speaking up if he'd said something like "Trigger warning: opinions". Whether or not he thinks TWs are legitimate, I'm just trying to provide basic context for the idea, because misusing the syntax suggests he might not have run across it in actual usage before.)
4203622
See, the Kernel time put it in for a reason.
(That's my very favorite error. Number two is: "ERROR: No error." That one's almost Zen)
4203633
I am in complete agreement over this, but may I just offer a tiny dissent insofar as I have seen 'trigger warning' used to mean 'This is some nasty stuff and contains so many potentially triggering bits that to list them would be grotesque. If you are prone to being triggered, stay away.'
I assumed that's what he meant...?
4203651 I get triggered by trigger warnings, so, trigger warning about- I AM SO ANGRY!
4203540 ...So you're in management?
4203651
Fair enough, though if it's that noxious I would think the trigger would be clear from context, like "photo of lynching (trigger warning)". The post was titled "I saw something interesting on Medium today", and the link to the post just said "Here's the link from Yassmin Abdel-Magied about why she walked out of the Brisbane Writers Festival keynote address given by Lionel Shriver"; none of that offered any context (or any reason to believe something would be so grossly offensive as to require a general warning), at least without knowing what happened at the Festival, which I didn't.
4203301
4203345
4203332
Like many practices, there can be both good and bad "cultural appropriation". Let me give you an example: the Chinese coolies building the railroads in North America used to make their own food, including "kay dzap" or "tomato sauce" in Cantonese. Non-Chinese working on the railroads tasted it and liked it, and then began making their own "ketchup" (or "catsup", depending on where they lived.)
Ketchup was culturally appropriated from the Chinese, and is something found on practically every table in North America. Is this good or evil? (Personally, I hate the stuff, being a mustard and mayo kind of dude.)
As several folks have posted above, not all cultural appropriation (such as the adoption of foreign words in a language, for example) is theft. The key is how the author uses and presents those elements from a culture other than his/her own. Perhaps we have to give the reader some credit in being able to tell the difference between respect, indifference and mockery. To use the idea of avoidance of "cultural appropriation" as a reason to silence the voices of authors seems to me more like a form of prejudice and censorship than cultural sensitivity!
Now in the interest of full disclosure, in addition to not liking ketchup I am of French/Irish/Scottish/English/native North American descent and my wife is Chinese from Hong Kong. I speak Cantonese as well as French, English and a bit of Swedish (don't ask.) And I have Aunts, uncles and several cousins who are of African American descent (our family BBQs are decidedly not monochromatic affairs!)
Still, even if the above weren't the case, I would consider it very legitimate for a person of my background to do a story about a Zebra mare using Swahili words and poetry and Eastern African lore (and I have, just as I've used French and Italian elements in other stories). But then I consider it legitimate for ANY author, no matter what their background, to respectfully embrace the culture and artifacts of other cultures in their stories. The alternative, to me, is in effect saying that you can never learn or understand another culture, and that goes against over 54 years of this multicultural boy's life!
4203697 Nope! I'm a teacher.
I am not kidding.
4203273 That's not true. He can get a sex change operation which will magically transform him from an evil white oppressor who defiles everything he touches into a perfect transsexual who can do no wrong.
4203790 no, because Bruce Jenner still catches heck for being an admitted Republican. :)
4203828 Then you just go sabotage the Democrats. Register for them, vote for the worst candidate in the primaries, and vote against them in the general election. Problem solved.
4203373 I love this comment. I've always felt that culture needs to be viewed as a functional tool, same as anything else. I love the good old USA because our real national bird shouldn't be the Eagle, it should be the Magpie, because if there is any bright and shiny piece of useful culture out there, BAMN we're going to swipe a piece and add it to our nest!
4203728
I agree. When it comes to cultural appropriation (which is a thing, albeit overused), respect is key.
Cultures are fluid, and are constantly interacting with and influencing each other, and I do strongly disagree with that vocal minority who suggests that every culture should be an island unto itself, and that anyone partaking in another culture is "appropriating" it. As long as you are treating the other culture with respect, and actually make an effort to learn about it beyond novelty or caricature, then it's a good thing. It's something more people should be doing, in fact.
True cultural appropriation arises from a lack of respect. It often happens when one group of people dominates another and then rips certain things (traditions, objects, etc.) out of their proper cultural context, often in a condescending or outright derogatory way.
The same rule applies to things like writing. As long as you treat the group in question with respect, and don't presume to speak on behalf of the group or their experiences, then let the multiculturalism fly.
4203846 I think both parties did that this year.
*Warning, this post contains nuts*
4203790
First off... CLAN GHOST BEAR!
Now onto my real comment.
As an author, specifically an author trained to write everything from Screenplays to poetry (I was really exhustive when I went to college, because English classes are fun), I think by default I am the kind of person who looks around and says to myself "That looks like it'd be fun to write," and then I write about stuff.
Now, I will admit, I am not a minority per-say, my mom's side of the family is Hispanic, and my dad's is tall white dude. But I've written about quite a few things in my twenty-five years of life, mostly from middle-school on because obviously babies can't write. And if they can I am afraid to read it lest I fall into a trap like "The Star in Yellow" or something. But, when I write something that isn't me (Bisexual tall white dude) I tend to do my research, or at the very least I don't go all "ALL WHO OPPRESE THIS GROUP MUST DIE!" because, honestly, that doesn't make good writing in the first place!
Good writing, at it's very core, is simply storytelling. I think we can all agree on that. And I've never found rage against the machine to be good writing, because to me good writing is stories of personal struggle and accomplishment. Love found, and love lost. Battles won, and battles that take a horrible toll on both sides.
Stories are about life. And life is the little things.
Now, I don't think everyone loves my stuff, hay I sometimes look at my stuff and think it's complete crap, but I honestly don't know why anyone would stand on a soapbox and shout that I cannot, should not, write something because I am not that something. As an author, do I not for that moment as I write that character, share in their lives and their struggles just as the reader does? If I have done my research, listened to the stories, and seen the pictures, is it not my duty as a storyteller to relay them? To pass on the events, and the emotions, of such things to those who would otherwise not see and feel them? Should I not, using literary allegory, give people a glimpse into what was previously unknown to them?
Anyway, I'm going to get off my soap box, or whatever I am standing on, and go back to doing everything this person tells me is wrong. Ima go write about colorful ponies living life, and doing whatever the hell they do.
4203880 Agreed. If nothing else, the clusterfuck is entertaining to watch. Between Trump being his over the top self, Clinton's people actively sabotaging her campaign, and the media generally loosing their collective shit without making any attempt to hide their bias, it's far more entertaining than anything else on TV these days. Hell, at this rate I'm going to be sad when November rolls around and the actual election puts an end to it because this shit is comic gold.
4204065 It's good to see someone with taste around here.
4203862 Ok, I think I'm going to have to get off the sidelines and weigh in on this because I have been seeing some bias around here with the "respectful" bits. I'm not saying you specifically are guilty of this, but there is some critical nuance here I feel the need to point out and you happened to be the last one commenting about it so you get the reply.
It is critical to remember that this assimilation is not a one-sided process, and one culture taking in the new element may see something as interesting or be inspired to create something entirely new based on what they see in another culture. Due to the differences between the two cultures, the one doing the assimilation can very easily see this as a positive thing while the culture they are drawing from could find it offensive. That doesn't necessarily make it wrong because people can and do have different perspectives on things all the time, but you have to consider this from the perspective of both cultures rather than just one. One culture is not inherently more right or wrong than the other, so you can't use one culture's viewpoint to say that the other cannot learn from their interactions because then you are disrespecting the culture picking up the new elements.
Similarly, it is important to recognize that cultures change over time, so what was normal and acceptable in the past may not be in the present. This difference must also be understood and respected in order to preserve history and to fairly judge people according to the standards of their time.
Furthermore, a level of disrespect by out-groups is not just acceptable, but healthy and necessary for any culture to grow and improve. Not being immersed in a culture gives people an outside perspective on it and gives them the ability to see flaws the members of the culture are unable to see because they are used to them. This gives a culture a unique and valuable insight into its own flaws and contradictions which is very difficult to obtain from the inside and is absolutely essential for growing and evolving. This process may not be easy or pleasant for those whose way of life is shaken by the input and change, but it is absolutely essential for long-term survival. It is important to note that the most dominant and successful cultures throughout history from Rome to the United States have been those that were quick to accept harsh feedback and use it to improve themselves in one way or another, not the groups that walled out others to maintain the "purity" of their culture.
Those SJW types tend to be really bad about failing to recognize these critical considerations and wind up being far more damaging than the normal disagreements you get between people with different viewpoints as a result. Also, as mentioned previously, cultures must grow and evolve in order to survive, so anyone advocating this level of coddling is actually working to kill the culture they claim to be trying to protect.
4204216
I spent a few years playing Mechwarrior online...
Though, I was not a member of Clan Ghost Bear... rather I belonged to...
sarna.net/wiki/images/thumb/c/c4/ClanWolf.gif/279px-ClanWolf.gif.png
>.>
4204216
I agree with you on pretty much everything, though I'm honestly not sure what any of it has to do with the rule-of-thumb of being respectful when drawing from other cultures. Perhaps this:
Generally that's a valid point, except (I would argue) in cases where the borrowing culture exerts political power over the borrowed culture. It's one thing if, for example, there's a cultural exchange between the Western world and Asia, wherein the East has adopted some Western influences and the West has adopted some Eastern influences. It's a different matter, I think, when, for example, the U.S. lifts elements of the culture of Native Americans who've historical been treated pretty badly, who didn't have much say in the matter, and whose traditions have often been caricatured and viewed as primitive. That's the point I was trying to make.
Again, a cultural exchange can be a very good thing, but respect is key. And yes, I think the onus is on the borrower to be respectful.
That article is amazing. So much narcissistic melodrama compacted into such a tiny space. I'm sure the "hundreds of audience members" that were "questioning, querying, judging" knew that she was making a political point by walking out of the room and not simply heading to the restroom.
That said... there is something of a point to be made regarding cultures being treated as costumes or stereotypes. Most people, though, just roll their eyes when they encounter these things, because what are you gonna do?
4204289 "....It's a different matter, I think, when, for example, the U.S. lifts elements of the culture of Native Americans ...."
First, some quick background. I live in a state named after an indian tribe, in a county named after an indian tribe, where it seems that about half the counties, cities, and points of interest are named by/from/because of indians in one way or another. A *huge* number of grade/high schools in the state have indian names or mascots, and yet every few years, a group of completely white social justice nitwits comes around and tries to strongarm one county or another into changing their team name, *including* the Manhattan High Indians, named after a former football coach, Frank Prentup, who was a native american.
Cultural lifting goes both ways. Sometimes it seems the social justice people are just determined to wipe out any memory of people who are different than what they imagine themselves to be, while we're pretty proud of the heritage of our area.
4203305
If someone falls for alt f4 they kinda deserve it. I mean all it does is kill your web browser, which ain't that hard to undo.
4203790
4203828
I will say, as someone going through the actual TG experience right now, stuff like this does kinda suck, a lot, to read - not about the political parts but about it being made so casually light of. Like, yea, I totally get there are nutters out there who have that do-no-wrong attitude, but there's a whole lot more wrapped up in it too. Mostly, me? I'm just scared all the time of what might happen when I have to go public because it's no longer possible to stealth the 'old' way because physical changes are too obvious - and I work somewhere with a great reputation for being super inclusive.
4203622 Back when I was in school, we had a mythical man page for something called 'lpshred' (instead of the unix lp) for a theoretical printer hooked up to a shredder, where you could specify how many copies to print and shred, to use linear or cross-cut shredding, etc... (Hey you kids, do you remember having to put ! in your email addresses? We did.)
4203282 Research is for wusses. Look at how many books about third-world life every year get outed as being written by some pasty-white East Coast author and consider that that's probably only a single-digit detection rate. Also anthropology papers written by scientists who never visited the area written about, psychology papers/books written on subjects who don't exist, teaching manuals written using methods which are complete and abject failures, climate science theorists who fake both data and models...
4203727 To be absolutely and totally clear, I believe microagressions are only worth microannoyances, trigger warnings are for delicate snowflakes who should remain locked in their parents' basements and never exposed to the outside world, and that Sturgeon's Law, when related to politics or public opinion, is a vast underestimate.
4203730 I'm sorry. I married one. I know your pain. Teaching wouldn't be so bad if not for all those students...
4203305 "...The people who were outraged by the flag were ascribing thoughts and motivations to the people flying the flag that in the majority of the cases simply did not exist..."
I think you can replace the word/phrase 'flag' here with just about any phrase or word that the social justice crowd finds the most pearl-clutching and still be perfectly accurate. Be cautious, though. The meaning of a word changes as they determine it does, much like fiction. "When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
4203373 You know, I read that last line of yours about six times and I still don't know what it says. That offends me. I insist you remove it. (Just kidding. Except for the part about not understanding it. I parsed the logic several times and it was much like looking at an APL program and trying to figure out what it does. Do you have a simpler translation?)
4203600 Hey, it's always the Germans. And I've always been puzzled why the social justice peeps seem so keen on hating Slavs despite the very name showing that Slavs were indeed once slaves, so much so that the name for their race means exactly that. I guess they/we weren't the exact type of slaves the social justice types were looking for. Wrong serial numbers or something. And if you're ever researching to write about a Kansas type, give me a call.
4203301 Trivia: Forest J. Ackerman, legendary Scifi/Fantasy/Movie/everything person, authored several lesbian stories as "Laurajean Ermayne" and was celebrated by the DOB as such.
4204338
First of all, I stand by everything I said about how Native Americans and their culture have been treated in America.
Now, as long as the heritage you are so proud of doesn't disrespect their heritage, or, as Hoopy put it, treat them as a costume, I don't think it's that big of a deal. The area where I live is pretty similar in that regard. Like I've been saying, respect is the key.
Good for him. Like I said in my first post, it's awesome when straight people write gay characters.
4204344 My heart goes out to you because I know how stressful this time is. Just remember, who you are inside is far more important than any accessory packages of whatever model.
4204229 Ah, I see. I wasn't real impressed with that game, although a big part of that stems from the general lack of customization when compared with the older games and especially the tabletop game. I also heard they tried to "balance" Clan and IS gear like most of those games do instead of letting the Clans have appropriately better gear giving them more potent, but fewer, 'Mechs (5 vs. 12 is the standard "even" matchup in canon), although I had tried it and given up before the Clans were released.
4204289 As I said earlier, it was less about what you said and more that you reminded me of an important consideration that I felt the need to lay out clearly.
As for the balance of assimilation, the politics are fundamentally a lie. Cultures assimilate aspects based on their flexibility and openness to change, not political power and certainly not based on some kind of permission. American culture didn't assimilate big chunks of the native cultures because of a political imbalance, but because the aptly named "melting pot" of the United States is generally very open to integrating ideas from other cultures into itself.
Similarly, culture is far too dynamic and organic for any form of permission to be possible. Cultures just interact and adopt elements from the other based on what they like and what proves useful. There is simply no possible way to stop this two-way flow between cultures in contact with one another since it is baked into the very nature of communication.
Also, it is critical to analyze the very concept of "respect" because it is very heavily tied to culture in and of itself. Two cultures or even two individuals within a single culture can very easily strongly disagree on what they consider respectful, so "being respectful" isn't some kind of magical solution because it is highly subjective and I can guarantee there will be disagreements on what is and isn't "respectful". One glance at the blog post should make that clear enough, so ultimately you have to accept that cultural exchange will happen weather you like it or not, and people will always disagree on weather a particular example is "good" or not.
4204344 To be perfectly blunt, that comment had nothing to do with actual transgender people. It was purely a comment about the moronic SJW types which will ascribe sin and virtue purely based on what category you happen to fall into in their minds.
If, for the sake of example, we assume you are a white female-to-male transgender person who has completely finished your transition, those people would see you as a white man at first glance and therefore assume you are a horrible person and that everything you say is automatically wrong because you are a white man. If you then told them you were transgender, they would immediately pull a complete 180 and declare you a persecuted minority who can do no wrong. You have quite obviously not changed in any way and certainly didn't deserve either attitude extreme, but their stupid worldview with absolutely no basis in reality results in that insane shift based on one minor detail which has nothing to do with your actual character which is obviously more complicated since you are an actual human being and not a cardboard cutout hero/villain.
Hopefully this makes my stance clear and shows you why my insult was not directed at people like you, but at the political idiots who richly deserve these types of insults for their moronic and blatantly discriminatory views.
Also, for completeness, I should probably mention that I have a truly extraordinary ability to not give a fuck about things. I simply don't care about things like this because they are about how you live your life and really don't affect me in any significant way, so I see no reason to waste time and energy on them. If you were my coworker and you told me what was happening, I would basically just shrug, say "ok", and move on because that would be sufficient acknowledgement as far as I was concerned. I'm not making light of it because I think it is stupid or something, I'm making light of it because I consider it a non-issue, and I suspect that is the case for many others with similar attitudes. Also, I strongly suspect this is also true of most of the trolls who use it to poke SJW types to watch them explode because they are making their comments to provoke hypersensitive scumbags, not to legitimately insult those groups.
4204443
Clan Mechs are, sadly, underpowered next to IS mechs...
A Timberwolf should wipe the floor with an IS Atlas or Hunchback. Instead, as a Timberwolf Pilot, I'm usually dead in the first five minutes from an IS Raven or Jenner.